January 31 marked the close of the campaign to collect signatures supporting a memorial plaque marking the site where opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was slain one year ago. Organizers plan to present the signatures to the mayor’s office in March. (Russian Service)

Activists on January 30 continued their monthly campaign, “Announcement of Names,” in which they gather in central Moscow to recite the names of current political prisoners, who numbered more than 200 at month’s end. (Russian Service)

Rights groups and opposition leaders say that a photo posted by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov on Instagram depicting the Parnas party leaders in the sights of a gun is incitement to murder. (Current Time TV)

As falling commodity prices upend economies in Central Asia, an expert panel discussed how the region’s ruling elites would balance the need to implement austerity measures against the imperatives of maintaining political control.

In a long column about Putin’s “revanchism,” journalist Oleg Kashin wrote that Putin has resurrected the Soviet system, reviving “not something that...people miss, but what they once hated: nomenklatura, class and ideological dictates, and a foreign policy of fences.” (180k on RFE/RL’s Russian Service website).